When KBIA and the Columbia Missourian first met Shirley LeBlanc, she was a 19 year-old single mother in Harrisburg, Missouri. It was winter break of her senior year in high school when Shirley found out she was pregnant. Her family, particularly her mother was there to comfort her.
“The first thing she helped me realize is that my life isn’t over, my life has just changed,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc struggled with the loneliness and challenges of single teenage parenthood. However, her faith was the thing that kept her together. As part of the My Life My Town project, producers documented Shirley’s story in 2011.
In 2015, the My Life My Town project decided to re-visit Shirley to see how her life had changed.
Shirley met Luke McDonald through a mutual friend at a church picnic. In 2013, Shirley and Luke blended their families when they married. Grayson, Shirley son, was 2½ at the time, and Morgan, Luke's daughter, was almost 8. Shirley now works at My Life Clinic, the center she used when she first discovered she was pregnant with Grayson. She meets with women to give them information about parenting and other options available for an unplanned pregnancy. She brings a lot of personal experience to the conversations she has with women, and she believes it helps make her a better resource for them.
Here is the follow-up My Life, My Town documentary of Shirley LeBlanc-McDonald, produced in 2015.
My Life, My Town is a series of films dedicated to giving teens a chance to tell their stories about growing up in rural areas or small towns in Missouri. It is a continuing collaboration between the Columbia Missourian and KBIA.
Portions of the text of this article were written by the Columbia Missourian